PAT TRAVERS

The Canadian-born virtuoso discusses the rise and fall of the Pat Travers Band, witnessing the U.K. punk revolution and the riotous roots of "Snortin' Whiskey"

- Joe Bosso

PAT TRAVERS WILL be the first to tell you that he had a very good time in the 1970s. “It was an incredible decade,” he says. “We played hundreds of shows and traveled everywhere. Yeah, after the gigs, I knew how to have fun — maybe I’d smoke a little and drink a little with the other bands on the bill. But I never trashed my hotel rooms or carried on and did anything too crazy. I always knew my limit.” He laughs. “Maybe that’s why I can remember the Seventies. A lot of people I came up with have no memory of what went down.”

During the second half of the Seventies, the Canadian-born singer and guitarist was an omnipresent figure on the live show circuit. He’d cut his teeth playing the clubs of Quebec and spent a year in Ronnie Hawkins’ band, but when he decided to get serious about a record deal, he found no takers in his homeland. “I didn’t want to go to New York or L.A., so I thought, ‘Let me try England,’” he says. In London, Travers’ rough and ready blues rock sound netted him a contract with Polydor, and his cover version of the boogie-woogie gem “Boom Boom (Out Go the Lights)” quickly became a fan favorite.

“I didn’t try to fit in with anything that was going on,” Travers says. “I was lucky enough to get my deal in England, but then the whole punk thing exploded, and that morphed into new wave, and then disco got huge. There was a lot of musical friction and changing tastes, and everything got too trendy in England. That’s when I decided to do my thing in the States.”

On his first three albums (1976’s Pat Travers and 1977’s Makin’ Magic and Putting It Straight), Travers performed with a trio that included British bassist Peter “Mars” Cowling and drummer Nicko McBrain (who would later go on to join Iron Maiden). For his Stateside debut, 1979’s